Food and the Culture of Hobbits: Tolkein on Fellowship and Warfare

“Bread, Surpassing the Savour of a Fair White Loaf to One Who Is Starving”: Food and the Culture of Hobbits : The Other Journal

You have got to read this article on the place of eating in Tolkein's writing.

It's the heart of fellowship.

Love it.

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A Pilgrim's Progress: A Few Thoughts on Sunday's Gathering

A Pilgrim's Progress: A Few Thoughts on Sunday's Gathering

Anyone want to do some of this?

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Seeker Friendly, New Testament Style (Part 1)

Debates about the extent to which church meetings are or should be accessible to the uncommitted or casual visitor have occupied a great deal of attention in Christian circles in recent years.

It is interesting to note within the context of this debate how little space has been given over to analysing how the new testament church actually understood the issue. Instead, an assumption is often made that a desire to be accessible to the un-churched outsider is an entirely new preoccupation, unknown to the early church. The reality however is quite different.

Paul's Corinthian correspondence, while focusing on the life of the church itself, also has an eye on those outside, as we shall see in a series of forthcoming posts on the subject.

Seeker Friendly, New Testament Style (Part 2)

A common assertion made in debates about church meetings being seeker-friendly is that the use of charismatic gifts is off-putting to outsiders.

If that is the case, perhaps it is because we do not really see many expressions of charismatic gifts being exercised in local church life in the way the apostle Paul envisaged. That is, involving the active participation of all members in the use of the gifts they have been given for the common good. Instead, we may see at best a platform-dominated use of prophecy or healing and the occasional use of tongues sung or spoken corporately.

Perhaps it is this latter use of spiritual gifts that is reportedly off-putting to the outsider rather than the usage that Paul envisaged when he wrote to the believers in Corinth about the administration of spiritual gifts.

Paul's guidance for regulating the use of spiritual gifts in church meetings is twofold: their use should be both intelligible and edifying. The manifestations of the Spirit must be understood by those present so that they can be built up by them. For this reason, Paul gives some practical guidance in 1 Corinthians 14 on how the gifts should to be exercised in an intelligible and edifying way:

• tongues should be interpreted (13-17) and spoken one after another (27)
• prophecy should be delivered one after another rather than blurted out at the same time (29-31)
• prophecy should be weighed (29)
• women should not disrupt the meeting by chatting out of turn (34)

It is in this context that Paul applies the same principle of intelligibility to the needs of the non-believer who might be present in the meeting:

The key passage - and one that often proves difficult to understand - is 1 Corinthians 14: 20-25:

Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults. In the Law it is written: "Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me," says the Lord.

Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!"

At first glance, the passage appears to contradict itself in several places. In v. 22, firstly, Paul says that tongues are a sign for unbelievers but in v 23 he says that when unbelievers hear the gift of tongues in the meeting, they will think the church is mad. Hardly a convincing sign, we might think.

In v. 22 and 24, Paul appears to make another contradiction. On the one hand, he asserts that prophecy is for believers but in 24, its use appears to be instrumental in convincing unbelievers of God's presence and their own guilt.

How do we resolve these apparent contradictions?

What is a Sign?

Firstly, we should understand what Paul means by "sign" in this passage. It is often assumed that the apostle is asserting that the gift of tongues is an evidence of the truth of the gospel that will lead unbelievers to faith in Christ.

Actually, the context of the passage requires us to see the use of the word sign in quite a different way. The quotation from the Old Testament is taken from the book of Isaiah. In that passage (Isaiah 28: 11-12) the prophet is predicting the impending invasion of the Assyrian army as a judgment on Judah and Jerusalem, an event which subsequently took place c. 700 BC. The "strange tongues" described by Isaiah are therefore the voices of Assyrian soldiers as they lay siege to Jerusalem and their presence indicates God's judgment on the nation.

The "sign" that Paul is referring to, therefore, in 1 Corinthians 14 is not a sign that confirms the truth of the gospel to the unbeliever, but is rather a sign of judgment upon him. When a non-believer hears the gift of tongues used without interpretation in a church meeting, that event signifies God's judgment on him. He is, to use another Pauline term, an "unspiritual man". The gift of tongues without interpretation highlights this fact and results in the seeker drawing an incorrect conclusion about the phenomenon he is observing.

Paul does not say that the presence of this sign is a good thing! Rather, Paul's point is that it serves no value to the outsider beyond confirming him in his ignorance of spiritual things. Therefore, implies Paul, tongues without interpretation is definitely NOT seeker-friendly!

Who is Prophecy For?

The second apparent contradiction can be resolved in a similar way. Paul does not say that prophecy is a "sign" for believers. Rather, he simply states that it "for believers." In other words, believers (rather than seekers) are the intended recipients of the gift of prophecy.

This being the case, the use of prophecy, unlike the use of uninterpreted tongues, is intelligible to both believers and outsiders. To the former, it serves to build them up. To the latter, its revelatory element serves to highlight their own guilt before God because they can understand it. A message in tongues may well be full of revelation (Paul earlier describes it as "uttering mysteries with your spirit") but, because it is not intelligible, the believers are not edified and the outsiders think you're all mad.

Prophecy, by contrast, which is also full of revelation, is intelligible to both saint and sinner. Its effect, therefore, is to edify the former and convict the latter.

Paul's conclusion should not come as a surprise in verse 39:

Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.

Paul saw the use of spiritual gifts as a positive thing in the life of the local church, both for the sake of the believers and for the benefit of the outsider. The key was that they should be exercised in ways that are understandable to both.

Colin Crouch, Post Democracy and Grass Roots Church Movements

My guess is that when Colin Crouch, Chair of the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, penned his short but absorbing book Post-democracy he was not anticipating that it would, in part, inspire thought about the nature of the Christian church.

When reading, however, I was struck by one paragraph that seemed to have a direct application to the idea of the church as a movement rather than an organisation.

Against the backdrop of the numerical decline in the manual working classes in Western societies and, as Crouch sees it, the related decline in mass concerted political action emanating from those social groups, he notes one movement that has bucked the trend of growing political passivity in recent years: namely, the rise of the feminist movement. Alongside the green movement, it has, says the author, "constituted the most important new instance of democratic politics at work" in recent decades.

The paragraph that struck me as having something to say (indirectly) about the church was as follows:

"Starting with small groups of intellectuals and extremists, it [feminism] spread to express itself in complex, rich and uncontrollable ways, but all rooted in the fundamental requirement of a great movement: the discovery of an unexpressed identity, leading to the definition of interests and the formation of formal and informal groups to give expression to these. As with all great movements, it took the existing political system by surprise and could not be easily manipulated. ... It is characteristic of a true major social movement that it takes a confusing and sometimes contradictory multiplicity of forms."

Those of us who have a longing to see a mass movement of Christian life which significantly effects the social and cultural landscape of our communities and nations, may wish to reflect on these ideas:

1. Mass Christian movements often start at the fringes and are easily dismissed or ridiculed in their early stages. While we look back with awe at, say, the Wesleyan movement of the C18, we do well to remember that in origin it was quirky and led by a small band of prayerful extremists.

2. A great movement requires the "discovery of an unexpressed identity". While we can rejoice wholeheartedly in the recovery across the Christian church in recent years of an appreciation of the grace of God in regard to the believer's righteous standing in Christ, his freedom from condemnation and law and the power of the new birth to deliver from slavery to sin, there is perhaps yet "more light" to be shed on the implications of this truth for our corporate life together. The discovery that, since I am in Christ, I am one with you if you are in Christ and that, when we meet together, Christ himself is present with us, no matter how few in number we are, is a truth whose power is, perhaps, waiting to be fully realised.

3. This discovery, that we the church have a shared identity and shared life waiting to be fully expressed beyond our current experience of church meetings and organised events could, according to Crouch's model, lead to the "defining of interests." Our interests as Christian believers include encouraging one another to grow in God's grace, caring deeply for one another and sharing our lives together in fellowship. Our interests include living holy lives for the glory of God.and seeking Christ's Kingdom in our lives, our families and in wider society . Our interests include a detachment from worldly priorities and a longing for the "appearing" of Christ at the end of the age when we shall be united with him forever. Our interests also include a desire to make Christ known to others by word and deed and to seek the advance of his kingdom throughout the nations.

4. The discovery of these interests could lead, in turn, to the formation of groups that give expression to them. Groups of believers who meet to pray, to feed on Christ through his word and through the sacrament of the Lord's supper, to share our lives together and to care for, teach and encourage one another. Groups where we learn from God's word and where true discipleship takes place which shapes everything about us. Groups which non-believers attend and in which they witness supernatural occurrences as the Spirit of Christ distributes gifts and manifestations to build up the members. Such groups might vary in size, in time and frequency of gathering and in numerous other secondary matters. I know what you're thinking - it sounds bit like the church we read of in Acts.

5. Such a movement could take existing systems by surprise. A system that has for so long been leader-centric could find that anyone and everyone is hosting and starting groups without asking for permission. We could find that, just as unnamed believers fleeing persecution first took the gospel to Antioch and into the Gentile world (see Acts 11), we could today see ordinary believers who have regular full-time jobs in offices, schools or factories breaking into new people groups with the good news in our multi-cultural cities and that new churches are appearing who sing the praise of Jesus Christ in Somali, Arabic and Polish. Although we may think we would rejoice in these untidy developments, we may in reality find ourselves nervous about these uncontrolled events, in similar ways to the reaction of European Catholicism 500 years ago when the reformers promised to translate the Bible into the common languages and place it in the hands of ploughmen and weavers to read and obey as their conscience taught them.

6. The fact that such a movement cannot be manipulated indicates how different it is from other structures that may exist within a society. In particular, such a mass movement is in nature quite different from a corporation or a firm, particularly as they increasingly exist in the Anglo-American economies. Such firms, which tragically (to my mind) some churches have sought to imitate, have a product or products, streamlined delivery and marketing systems, multiple layers of managers and highly powerful senior executives, the CEO being at the top of the organisation. All of which can make them efficient but also controlling.

Let me speak plainly.

I see a growing movement of believers developing outside of traditional church structures - and even outside of "new church" structures. Some of these believers are discouraged. Others are weak. And some, frankly, have significant gaps in their theology and practice. Most of them love the Lord Jesus but have fallen out of love with their previous experience of doing church. Many are longing for a way of being the church together that is highly relational, flexible and "in life".

I also think that those with gifts of leadership, teaching, pastoral care and apostleship would do well to serve these scattered believers with the word of God and with their gifts.

I'm reminded of the advice that Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones gave to the late Henry Tyler, a founding elder of what is now Church of Christ the King in Brighton. After finishing Bible college, Henry, who I knew personally, was considering taking on the pastorate of a Baptist church. Lloyd Jones urged Henry to "stay among the house churches" that were emerging in the 1970s and to teach them the word of God.

A similar phenomenon is emerging today. I hope that those outside this emerging movement who are leaders have the wisdom of Lloyd Jones as they look on and consider their response.

I have written a review of professor Crouch's book here.

The Joy of Service?

What's in a word?

When I first came across a fully-fledged charismatic church - Clarendon Church (now Church of Christ the King) in Hove, its literature invited people to the "meetings" and to "come and praise the Living God." It's more common in charismatic churches now to be invited to a "service".

It's a small difference which perhaps reveals a significant shift in thinking.

Meeting (I would prefer meating) is a functional word. It simply describes people coming together for a purpose.

Service is a religious word, borrowed from the pagan cults of the Roman Empire and applied to the Roman Catholic mass. It's strange, therefore, to find it used so freely in evangelical and charismatic circles. Even in this latter context, it carries connotations of performance and ritual and of a special class of person officiating.

It's understandable why this shift has taken place. Few charismatic churches really practice every-member-participating meetings anymore. Many have settled for something less - quality worship music, Bible preaching, a "ministry time". In this context, the concept of a service is appropriate. It has a start and finish time, a running order and, sadly, a certain predictability.

The Greek words most commonly translated "service" in English are diakonia, leitourgia and latreia. Diakonia comes from the world of household servants and is used of Martha's practical work in Luke 10:40. Paul employs the same term (in Romans 15: 31) to describe his task of bringing the financial gift he has gathered from the gentile churches to the poor among the believers in Jerusalem.

Leitourgia is used of the priestly service of Zechariah in Luke 1:23 and of the superior ministry Jesus has received as high priest (Heb 8:6). Paul describes the work of certain churches in the same way - the Corinthians' service of giving money to the poor (2 Cor 9:12) and the Philippians' help and service towards Paul himself (Phil 2:17, 30).

Latreia - from the word for a hired servant - is used in a variety of ways, including the reasonable act of giving ourselves to God (Rom 12:1) and the temple worship in the nation of Israel (Rom 9:4).

What is blatantly missing from all these uses of the service-group of Greek words is any use of them to describe a gathering of Christian believers as a local church. We serve God in the totality of our lives as we offer ourselves to him as living sacrifices, but there is no sense in the apostolic writings that we perform a special religious service when we meet together. This usage, as I have suggested above, owes more to the Roman Catholic concept of the mass than the new testament feel of believers gathering for a fellowship meal, to pray and to build each other up. All of these acts are (or should be) service to God. When we gather together, we are meeting not performing a ritual.

At least, that's how I see it.